


a place for us

by claudias



Category: Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (Cartoon)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Found Family, Happy Ending, Jewish Ben Pincus, Mantah Corp, Pining Yaz, Post-Season/Series 01, because i am jewish and i said so, lots of dinosaurs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28424160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claudias/pseuds/claudias
Summary: After the ferry leaves them behind, the campers must figure out how to pick up the pieces.
Relationships: Bumpy & Ben Pincus, Darius Bowman & Ben Pincus, Darius Bowman & Brooklynn, Kenji Kon & Ben Pincus, Yasmina "Yaz" Fadoula/Sammy Gutierrez
Comments: 26
Kudos: 72





	1. the flame is gone; the fire remains

**Author's Note:**

> hi lol
> 
> 1) the majority of this was written before the season 2 trailer dropped  
> 2) i have only seen the first jurassic park movie so i am sorry
> 
> buckle up :D
> 
> descriptions of injuries in this chapter, mentions of blood and discussions of death

Ben wakes up alone.

At first, he’s not sure where he is—lying in a clearing, surrounded by trees and rocks and bushes—or how he got there, but when he tries to sit up and his entire body flares in pain, it all comes back to him in a flash.

The monorail, the rush of wind against his body, trying to pull him down, and Darius’s grip on his hand the only thing keeping him suspended in the air, until it’s gone.

And then he’s falling. Falling, falling, falling. Closing his eyes and letting himself fall, until there’s nothing.

Now there’s something.

Unimaginable pain, shooting through every nerve in his body. The sunlight, too bright against his face. The dirt, too rough below him. 

Ben thinks maybe he could lie here forever. He knows it’s too late. Darius and Yaz and Sammy and Brooklynn and Kenji made it to the ferry, made it off the island, and now he’s alone. He thinks, logically, he should be mad at them, but he just… can’t bring himself to feel that way. He can hardly feel anything other than pain.

He can’t blame them for leaving him behind. He didn’t expect to even be alive, not after a fall like that. If they could at least get to safety, then it was all worth it.

Ben takes in a shuddering breath and stares up at the sky. Wherever he is, he’s safe for now. There’s no reason for him to get up and compromise that.

Danger finds him first. It comes in the form of quiet rustling in the nearby bushes, and if he doesn’t listen too closely, it could be mistaken for the wind. But then it grows louder, and despite his body and every rational thought left in his brain telling him not to, Ben pushes himself to his feet because if he doesn’t move now, he’s dead.

He stumbles but catches himself on a tree, and then begins to limp away from the sound as fast as he can manage. He should consider himself lucky that he can still walk after that fall, but putting weight on his body lets him know where he took the most damage, and it’s immediately evident. His right leg, his left arm, and the pounding in the back of his head. To describe it best, it feels as if he’s been set on fire, stomped on, and hit by a train, all at once.

Ben moves with little grace, and he makes it about twenty feet before he trips over a rock and is sent sprawling on his back with a hard thud.

The unknown creature moves closer, and Ben raises his arm to shield his face, squeezing his eyes closed shut. If he’s lucky, it’ll be a Compy or something equally harmless. If he’s not, then… he doesn’t want to know. In his mind, he pictures the worst dinosaur of them, ready to attack; not the mosasaurus, not Toro, not even the Indominus rex, but the pterosaur. The one that had started this whole nightmare.

He braces himself for the worst: imminent death that seems to be unavoidable in this stupid theme park.

The worst ends up being a horned head rubbing against his leg.

Ben lowers his arms, reluctantly opening his eyes to view his attacker, which... isn’t an attacker at all.

“Bumpy!” he yells, a grin spreading across his face as he sits up to pet the ankylosaurus standing by his feet. He doesn’t even care if he alerts any nearby dinosaurs; he wants to laugh and sing and shout from the rooftops. “Wait, but… how—”

He cranes his neck to look at the monorail tracks above him, which doesn’t go without pain flaring throughout his spine, then back down at Bumpy, who’s now cuddling up to him like a cat, and that’s when he notices the jagged crack in her right horn. “Oh no,” he murmurs, running his hand over the horn tenderly. Bumpy makes a soft cooing noise. “What happened to you?”

Ben wishes, stupidly, that Bumpy could speak, could tell him what happened to the rest of the campers. Why would they leave her behind? He’d known they were never too fond of her, but…

 _No,_ he thinks. No more worrying about the past and lingering on the things that don’t matter anymore. The facts are, he’s here on this island with no one else looking out for him, and he needs to be concerned with his and Bumpy’s safety.

His first order of business, he decides, is to make it to Main Street. There has to be some form of communication device there—a phone, a radio, anything. And he should be able to find shelter, what with all the buildings lined on the street.

Slowly, he rises, steadying himself on his feet. “Alright, Bumpy,” he says. “We’re going to Main Street now. Are you in?”

Bumpy makes an enthusiastic sound, and Ben smiles with a newfound determination before setting off into the unknown.

-

It’s quiet.

Yaz always thought she liked the silence, the peace and solitude of it, but now it feels wrong, all of them sitting around on the southern shore of the island, afraid to break the quiet that’s settled over them.

Brooklynn and Sammy sit together, and Yaz tries not to look in their direction for too long. Thinking about Sammy… hurts, and yet, Yaz can’t bring herself to hate her, not after everything. It’s a strange feeling she can’t identify, the feeling that lodges itself in the pit of her stomach, in the back of her throat, in the beating of her heart. It’s inescapable, constantly growing and blooming, and Yaz doesn’t want to think about what that means.

It’s weird. She actually _likes_ having friends. People who care about her and who she cares about too; people that she’d do anything to protect. It’s different, in a good way.

She turns her gaze to Kenji, who’s been sullen ever since the monorail. He sits off by himself, clutching Ben’s fanny pack like it’s a lifeline. Yaz never thought she’d hate the day he finally shut up, but seeing his flame die out is hard to watch.

She feels worst of all for Darius, who sits only a few feet away from her, watching the ocean intently. Yaz knows he’s blaming himself for what happened to Ben; she can tell just from the look in his eyes, the way his hand is curled by his side.

She wants to say something to him, to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but she can’t find the words. No motivational speech is going to bring Ben back, and that reality seems to have sunken in. No one is coming for help. They’re on their own now.

As the sun sets, they decide to keep watch in shifts. Yaz has the third watch, which is arguably the worst, but she’s run on fewer hours of sleep before. The worst part, really, is that they’ll have to sleep against the stacks of cargo boxes on the docks, which won’t do any good for her already aching body.

For now, no one seems to have a definite plan. Yaz guesses it’s something along the lines of, ‘stay on the docks until another dinosaur attack drives us away.’

Sleep doesn’t come easy. The combination of the waves lapping against the shore, of the electric hum of machinery, of the distant cries of birds, it’s all too loud. Too much. She covers her ears with her hands, trying to block out the sounds, but her attempt is unsuccessful. The quiet somehow manages to be the loudest.

And by the time Yaz’s shift rolls around, she hasn’t gotten a wink of sleep. Her ankle is killing her, shooting flares of pain up her leg. Looking back on it, she probably shouldn’t have been walking—or running—at all, but she figures a little bit of pain is far better than dying.

There are worse things than a fractured ankle.

She almost dozes off, but the sound of footsteps jolt her awake. They’re quiet and slow, and she almost doesn’t hear them, but they’re followed by a clatter, then a whispered curse.

Alert, Yaz rises, peering over the crate she’d been sleeping against, and making his way down the dock is none other than Kenji.

“Kenji!” she whisper-yells, and he immediately turns, guilt plastered across his face, which is lit only by the moonlight reflecting off the sea. “What are you doing?!”

She limps over to him as he just stands there, looking like a deer in the headlights. “Where are you going?” she asks him.

“Chill, track-star,” Kenji says, crossing his arms. That’s arguably the worst nickname someone’s ever come up with. “I was just going to find a tree. Nature calls.”

She scowls.

“What?” he says, feigning ignorance. “I didn’t want to wake the others up. They need their sleep.”

“You’re lying.”

“Look, I get it, Yaz,” Kenji says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. She immediately pushes him off. “You’re paranoid. You don’t trust anyone, and it’s clear you’ve never really had friends before. Well, me neither, so we’re now self-appointed best friends. And since we’re friends, you are going to let me leave this dock and not mention a word of it to anyone. Capiche?”

Yaz puts her hands on her hips and glares at him. Something’s up. This is the most she’s heard him speak since his freak-out in the tunnels, and he’s back to the old, annoying douchebag Kenji. He’s overcompensating for something, but she can’t figure out exactly what it is.

Before she has the chance to retort, a squawk comes from above. She looks up to see a lone pteranodon circling over the island.

Kenji’s noticed it, too. When he looks back to Yaz, he won’t look her in the eyes, and for a second, there’s nothing but quiet, the awful quiet. Then, it’s like something switches, and Kenji sighs. “Ben.”

“What?”

“I’m going back to find Ben. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Yaz is momentarily shocked into silence. Kenji sounds so… defeated, it almost makes her sad, but then she remembers the idiocy of it all. “Did you forget there are carnivorous dinosaurs roaming the island? You’ll get killed!”

“So will Ben,” says Kenji. “He’s all alone out there, and…”

“Ben is _dead!”_ Yaz yells. Kenji flinches. It seems, just by speaking those words into existence, they become more real, somehow. Before, she could pretend that maybe Ben _is_ out there, but…

“He’s dead,” she repeats, softer.

“You don’t know that,” Kenji persists. “We never—”

“We saw him fall from a monorail, Kenji! He’s dead, and we can’t risk our lives trying to find him.”

“We never saw his body. We don’t know he’s dead.” He sounds so tired, so broken, like a child. That’s what they are. They’re all just kids.

“Is that what you want?” Yaz asks. “You want to see his body? You want to see what happened to him and then live with that for the rest of your life?”

“I—”

“No, you don’t want that. But you didn’t think this through.”

Kenji’s shoulders tense. “Ben was right about one thing. We can’t abandon anyone, and I’m not abandoning him.”

“So you’re abandoning the rest of us,” says Yaz.

“Well, if you put it like that… it does kind of sound like a jerk move. And maybe I’m stupid for having false hope, but I can’t give up on him. So I hope, one day, you’ll understand.”

This isn’t working. She’s not getting through to him. “Kenji, you can’t do this.”

“I know,” Kenji says. “But I’m not asking for your permission.”

And then he runs. Yaz stumbles after him, moving as fast as her legs will allow. It’s not fast enough. “Hey!” she shouts, but Kenji doesn’t look back. “Kenji!”

She stops when she reaches the shore. Kenji has disappeared into the jungle, and she knows he’s long gone.

How is she going to explain to the others what happened? That instead of just one friend, they’ve now lost two? Yaz sinks to her knees in the sand, left alone again with the quiet.

-

Ben follows the volcano.

He knows the volcano is the northernmost feature on the island from the day he’d memorized the maps. It feels like so long ago. He’d been so naive before, believing that it was safe here, that anyone had a clue what they were doing.

And he can’t help but wonder what it would be like if he’d never gotten on that stupid ferry. He’d probably be sitting in his room, reading a book. His mother would knock on the door, asking if he wanted any homemade challah that she reserved only for special occasions. And he would say yes—he always said yes to his mother’s challah because it was heaven on a plate.

Thinking of this, the memory he’s created in his mind, makes him homesick. Now, his mother will be told he’s dead. That they never found him. That he’s another victim to the island.

Yet, if he wouldn’t have come here, he never would’ve faced his fears. More importantly, he never would’ve met his greatest—and only—friends. He never would’ve met Bumpy.

A life without any of them, even Kenji, isn’t a life he wants to live. He has to make it back to them somehow.

The volcano is still far off in the distance, and by any means, Ben and Bumpy aren’t moving fast. He thinks it could take a day or more to make it to Main Street, but it’s okay. As long as there aren’t any run-ins with dinosaurs who want to eat him.

At daybreak, the initial adrenaline has worn off completely. He’s starving, and the last time he’d eaten anything was, well… he doesn’t know how long he was unconscious for. It could’ve been hours, or even days.

Ben reaches for his fanny pack, but instead of feeling the familiar pouch around his waist, there’s nothing. Shit. That’s right, he’d discarded it before he climbed on top of the monorail. Just his luck.

He trudges on, scanning his surroundings as he walks and continually checking to see if Bumpy’s still with him. And—wait a minute, the sunlight seems to grow brighter up ahead, cutting through the trees.

He runs forward, ignoring the branches and bushes clawing at him, and pushes through the leaves to be greeted with a stadium and open water. _The lagoon!_ his mind registers, and he drops to the ground, breathing a sigh of relief.

Bumpy curls up under Ben’s arm, and he scratches behind her horn. “We’re here,” he tells her.

Looking out at the water, Ben can see the kayaks they’d abandoned during the mosasaurus attack, and he grimaces. It’s another cruel reminder of his friends. But they’re safe. That’s the important thing, that he was finally useful and could save them from the pterosaurs, even if he couldn’t save himself.

Ben pushes that memory out. He lifts his gaze to the other end of the lagoon, where Main Street is, or… should be? Everything’s destroyed. Collapsed buildings, wreckage strewn across the ground. What had happened here?

Despite whatever took place, he’s sure to find something of use among the chaos—a jacket, a map, maybe some hand sanitizer. Most importantly, he’s hoping to find food.

Ben keeps his guard up when he makes it onto the street. Even though it’s eerily quiet and seemingly abandoned, he knows better than to assume he’s safe.

He steps over the cracks in the road, the debris, and the stains of blood dried by the sun slapping his hand over his mouth in an attempt not to be sick at the sight. It’s a graveyard. Maybe not in the literal sense, but it sure feels like one. It’s a place of destruction and despair, and he figures that’s close enough.

Most of the buildings and stores Ben passes are nothing more than ruins, with their roofs collapsed in and their windows shattered, and they’re of no use to him.

Hopelessness gnaws at his stomach—or maybe it’s just hunger—and won’t leave him alone until he finally spots it at the end of the street. An intact store, one that has miraculously survived, unlike its neighbors.

Ben runs to the store, pulling open the door and holding it open long enough for Bumpy to pass through, and he allows himself to smile for the second time today.

It’s a gift shop. Sure, most of the racks and shelves are tipped over, and the items are lying haphazardly on the floor, but everything seems to be in mint condition.

There’s music playing faintly from somewhere inside the shop, some pop song Ben can’t identify, and though he’d never been partial to pop music, he wants to get up and dance. Finally, finally, finally, the universe has thrown him a bone. It’s almost too good to be true.

He tears into a bag of chips that had been lying on the floor, and he’s so happy just to have something to eat that he doesn’t even care about the high salt intake.

Bumpy bellows from beside him, rifling through the other bags with her foot.

“Hey, Bumpy, no!” Ben intervenes. “Dinosaurs aren’t supposed to eat chips. You’re supposed to eat plants.”

Bumpy makes a disgruntled noise but stops and stares blankly at him.

“Yes, I know potatoes are plants, but have you seen what they do to them to make them into chips?” says Ben. “And besides, you’ve been stopping to eat leaves all day! You don’t need another snack.”

Ben finally loses this battle when Bumpy looks at him sadly—he doesn’t even know how a dinosaur manages to look sad—and trots away, defeated.

“Fine,” he says, dumping out the remainder of his bag onto the ground. “You can have a couple chips.”

Bumpy turns around and chirps happily, and Ben watches as she eats the potato chips, gaze focused on her cracked horn. He still has so many questions. What happened to her horn? Why is she still on the island? How did she find him?

He tries to rationalize something in his head, that maybe she’d gotten turned away from the ferry because they thought she posed too much of a risk. That the others didn’t want to leave her behind, but they were forced to. But then, he realizes it doesn’t even matter. Bumpy is here with him now, and that’s the best thing he could’ve asked for. If he would’ve been alone, completely alone, then… he doesn’t know how well he would fare.

Ben takes a Jurassic World hoodie from one of the fallen racks and pulls it over his head. Bumpy watches him, seemingly finished with her snack. “What do you think?” he asks her. Bumpy, being the dinosaur she is, says nothing and starts pushing at the chip bags again.

Ben rolls his eyes, then begins to rummage around the store. They should have a first aid kit somewhere in here, or at least that’s what he hopes. But it seems there’s nothing of any value. He enters the back room, which is barren except for the boxes stacked on top of each other, until he spots it, hanging from the wall, a bright red first aid kit.

He seriously can’t believe his luck. However, Ben knows from experience that whenever something good happens on this island, something always goes wrong immediately after.

Ben decides he’s not going to worry about that, not right now. He takes the first aid kit to the bathroom and begins working to clean up his wounds, after taking off his watch to avoid water damage, of course. Doing this won’t stop the incessant pain or fix his sprained shoulder, but it’s something. It’s more than nothing.

Bandaging up his body, Ben realizes, first of all, just how much he hates blood, and secondly, how many scrapes and cuts he’d managed to acquire. He doesn’t remember hitting the ground when he fell—everything had gone blurry from the moment he let go of Darius’s hand—but he’s glad he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to imagine the pain he’d been in upon first impact.

Ben is in the middle of washing his hands for the third time when he hears the thud.

Immediately, he rushes out to the front of the store, where Bumpy stands facing the door, growling, tail lifted defensively.

“What is it?” Ben asks, coming to her side and looking out at the street. There’s nothing in his line of sight, but Bumpy is still in a stance like she’s ready for a fight.

Then he hears it. Footsteps. Quiet, but they’re definitely there, and they’re approaching.

It takes a moment for Ben’s fight or flight to kick in. If he had a choice, he would definitely choose flight, but that’s out of the question. There’s nowhere to run.

He grabs a Jurassic World pocket knife from a box on the checkout counter and holds it up, gripping it so tight that his knuckles turn white. He’s not ready for a fight with whatever dinosaur is out there, but it might be what he has to do to survive.

The footsteps draw closer, then the creature appears in front of the store, and Ben realizes it’s not a creature at all. It’s a person. And a very familiar one, at that.

“Oh my g-d,” he whispers, lowering the knife.

The person now turns his gaze to the front of the store, having noticed Ben and Bumpy.

Ben can’t hear him through the door, but he can see his lips form the word:

“Ben?”


	2. the band from the bird-station

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The campers find a glimmer of hope when a helicopter arrives on the island.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi again :)
> 
> 1) still haven’t watched jp/jw lol  
> 2) im Sorry for any scientific inaccuracies  
> 3) im like the biggest dinosaur apologist ever LMFAO  
> 4) there is a death in this chapter (of a dinosaur)

“What do you mean Kenji’s gone?!”

It’s only been a few minutes since Yaz woke the others up to break the news to them and about ten minutes since Kenji ran off. Darius paces up and down the dock while Sammy and Brooklynn turn their gazes on Yaz, confused.

“He’s just… gone,” she says, but her mind is still reeling, still trying to process what had happened. “I tried to stop him, but he ran, and I…” She trails off, but the others are still staring at her.

“Well, he couldn’t have gone too far, right?” Sammy says. Yaz envies her optimism. She doesn’t want to say it out loud, but a lot could’ve happened in that short period, and the jungle is vast, and it’s easy to get lost, and with every passing second, their chances of finding him diminish even more.

“He’s gone,” Darius whispers. He stops pacing and stares at the island before him. “Ben’s gone, and now Kenji, and… it’s all my fault.”

“No,” says Brooklynn. “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. Kenji chose to leave.”

“But if I hadn’t….” His voice breaks, and it feels as if a piece of Yaz’s heart shatters. “If I was able to save Ben, then he wouldn’t have…”

“Look, Darius, blaming yourself isn’t going to bring them back,” Brooklyn says. “What happened, happened, and now we pick up the pieces. Right?”

Darius turns away, clearly trying to hide the fact that he’s crying. “I don’t know what that even means anymore. I don’t know what to do.”

A long silence settles over the four of them. None of them know what to do. How should they be able to know what to do in a situation like this? When they’re trapped here, on a desolate island, and they keep losing their friends? But maybe they don’t have to lose Kenji. They can find him, even if he… doesn’t want to be found.

“We go after him,” Yaz says. The others look up at her. Going back into the jungle isn’t ideal, but it’s the only choice they have. It’s either that or remain on the docks, idle, waiting for rescue that will never come. “And we leave now.”

The quiet lingers in the jungle, too, hanging over them, and no one wants to be the one to break it. Yaz uses the shock prod to assist her along. Several feet ahead, Brooklynn and Darius lead, while Sammy and herself take up the rear.

Yaz doesn’t want to say anything to Sammy; she doesn’t know if she should. They need to talk about… everything, but it never seems like the right time. She never gets a chance to rest, to sit down and fully process everything. Yet, her mind seems to have already figured it all out, putting the pieces together like a puzzle. She doesn’t want things to stay the way they are, with all this tension between them. She doesn’t even want things to go back to the way they were. She just wants to start over and clean their slate.

“It wasn’t your fault, y’know.” Yaz is broken from her thoughts by Sammy’s voice. When she looks up, Sammy isn’t even looking at her, but she continues, “You couldn’t have stopped him.”

“I could’ve.”

“Yaz,” Sammy says. “You know Kenji. He follows his own rules.”

Deep down, she knows Sammy is right. Kenji wouldn’t have listened regardless of if it was her or Darius or any of them. It just… hurts to think that the last thing Kenji heard from her was yelling or anger. And that’s the worst part of it all—she hadn’t been mad at him—shocked, confused, scared, more than anything.

No, she needs to stop thinking of Kenji that way, as _dead._ Because he isn’t. And… oh, g-d, it all hits her in a rush, like a punch to the stomach. This is exactly the point Kenji had been trying to get her to understand. But… that had been different, because they know for a fact Ben is gone, that there’s no getting him back, and Kenji was acting recklessly. This is different. It has to be; she knows it is because there’s hope for Kenji. They can find him.

“Yeah,” Yaz murmurs, more of an acknowledgment that she’d heard Sammy more than agreement.

And then, Sammy says, “I’m sorry. For lying to you, and-and everyone, and for getting us all in this mess to begin with. This is probably the wrong time to say that, but…”

That’s what gets her. What breaks her. Sammy doesn’t know that Yaz had forgiven her long ago. And she realizes just how wrong she’s been about Sammy. Her spying for Mantah Corp hadn’t changed anything, because even when Sammy thought Yaz hated her, she still came through every time, without fail. To comfort her, to save her, to be the one constant in everything she does.

 _It’s okay,_ Yaz thinks. _As long as I have you, everything’s okay._

She wants so badly to say that out loud, to tell Sammy about everything she feels, but… the words die in her throat.

“Thank you,” is what she says, voice barely above a whisper.

“Look!”

The moment is interrupted by Brooklynn shouting. Her and Darius have stopped entirely, staring up at the sky, and that’s when Yaz is made aware of the loud rumbling in the air.

She looks up, too, between the dense canopy of trees, and it takes her a moment to find what they’re looking at. But then she sees it. Beyond the treetops, coming in from the south flies a helicopter, a _real helicopter,_ and Yaz can’t believe it.

“They came back for us,” Darius says, realization dawning on his face. “We’re being rescued!”

Brooklynn whoops, grinning, while Yaz lets out a breathless laugh. She turns to look at Sammy, but she’s met with a grim expression, and just seeing her like this is enough reason for a knot of dread to form in Yaz’s stomach.

“Sammy? What’s wrong?” she asks.

Sammy looks at Yaz, then back at the helicopter. “That’s not a Jurassic World helicopter.”

-

“Kenji?”

Ben can’t believe his eyes.

Kenji flings open the door, a look of both disbelief and relief spread across his face, and Ben moves towards him, meeting him halfway in a tight hug.

“Is-Is this real?” Kenji asks breathlessly.

“I don’t know,” Ben admits. He hadn’t realized just how much he had missed his friends until now, until he’s finally face-to-face with Kenji. And it doesn’t make sense how or why he’s even here, but he can’t question it now, not at a moment like this. He doesn’t look at Kenji; he just closes his eyes and embraces the feeling of his arms around him, as if looking will ruin the illusion.

But it’s not an illusion. Kenji is really here, tangible and _alive,_ and Ben never wants to let go.

Eventually, though, Ben reluctantly steps back, needing room to breathe. He opens his mouth to ask a question, but Kenji speaks at the same time.

“How are you—”

“Why are you—”

Ben clears his throat awkwardly. “Sorry,” he says. “You go first.”

“How are you alive?” Kenji asks. “And-And Bumpy! I lost her when we jumped off the monorail—”

“When you _what?”_ Ben asks, looking from him to Bumpy, who’s now relaxed, sitting by Kenji’s feet.

“It’s a long story. We had to jump, then we went through the maintenance tunnels and had this epic face-off with Toro,” Kenji says, beaming, but his demeanor quickly crumbles. “And we made it to the south docks, but… it was too late. The ferry left without us.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Ben glances behind Kenji, out the window, expecting to see the others, but the street is empty.

“Still at the docks. I… sort of snuck off to find you.”

Sheepishly, Kenji rubs the back of his neck, but Ben’s heart swells. Kenji cares about him. He cares about him enough to come back for him. He’d thought they’d all forgotten about him, but they _care._

“And-And I wasn’t even sure I’d find you,” Kenji continues. “I was running on this blind hope that maybe you were still alive, and you are, and it doesn’t even feel—”

Ben cuts him off by wrapping his arms around him again, and Kenji tenses at first, before melting into the hug. “I’m here,” he whispers, because Kenji needs to be reminded that this is real as much as he does. “I’m alive.”

“Yeah,” is all Kenji says, voice quiet. Ben swears he hears him sniffle.

“Kenji,” he says. “Are you crying?”

“Don’t you dare say anything to the others.” Kenji sniffles again, bringing a hand up to wipe his tears away. “And I don’t mean to get all sentimental, but… I’m really glad you’re alive, Ben,” he says. “So… thank you for not dying, or whatever.”

“You’re welcome, or whatever,” Ben says, and Kenji smiles weakly.

Suddenly, Kenji yelps and looks down at his feet. Ben follows his gaze to see Bumpy pawing at Kenji’s leg.

“Aw, I think she wants to be part of the hug,” Ben says as Bumpy nudges her head up against him.

“Alright, alright, group hug.” Kenji kneels down to Bumpy’s level, then looks up at Ben, gesturing with his hand. “Come on, Pincus, get in here.”

Ben grins, kneeling to join the hug, and for the first time since arriving on the island. He feels happy. Truly happy.

That feeling doesn’t last long.

They stay in the gift shop for a while—Kenji immediately jumps into a dramatic retelling of the events that took place since the monorail incident. Ben manages to make it through explaining his much less thrilling adventure without Kenji making any sarcastic comments.

And just as they’re about to pack up supplies for the trek to the dock, Ben hears it. The rumbling sound is unmistakable.

“Do you hear that?” he asks Kenji, who looks puzzled. Ben holds up a finger, signaling for him to be quiet. “It’s an airplane, or-or something.”

Kenji’s eyes widen, and he rushes out of the store, Ben and Bumpy close behind, stopping in the middle of the street. He points at the sky. “There!”

There it is, flying in from the south. A helicopter. It’s not at all what Ben expected it to look like, though. It’s much larger than any helicopter he’d seen before. “What kind of helicopter is that?” he asks.

“It’s a cargo helicopter,” says Kenji, watching as the helicopter flies closer. “They must be expecting to find a lot of survivors.”

Ben’s heart rate picks up. Survivors. They’re being saved. He’d started to accept the fact that he’d die on this island. Maybe sooner rather than later, but the reality of it was inevitable. And now, here’s a glimmer of hope, tangible and real, and so, so close.

“Do you think the others saw it?” Ben asks.

“They’re probably on it,” Kenji says. “C’mon, help me signal them!”

He starts waving his arms and shouting, so Ben joins in, but the attempt is futile. From way up in the air, they’re probably just specks, and he’s proven correct when the helicopter flies right over them.

Kenji groans. “This isn’t working,” he says, and before Ben can process it, he’s taking off down the street, towards the Innovation Center, in the opposite direction of the helicopter.

“Kenji! Where are you going?!” Ben calls after him.

Kenji stops and turns back to him. “Stay there! There’s an intercom system that projects across the park! Keep signaling so they can see us!” And then he starts to run, up the stairs and through the doors of the Innovation Center, and Ben prays to g-d that he knows what he’s doing.

Ben looks back at the helicopter, but it’s stopped midair, slowly lowering over the lagoon. It still hasn’t shown any signs of noticing them at all, but moments later, Kenji’s voice comes booming over the intercom.

“If you can hear me, there’s two survivors on Main Street. I repeat, there’s two…”

Kenji repeats his message a few more times, more and more frantically each time, but as far as Ben can tell, it’s not working. The helicopter hasn’t landed; instead, it deploys several cargo hooks into the water. Ben doesn’t understand. What are they doing?

Kenji returns to his side about a minute later, out of breath. “They… They can’t hear us,” he pants. “We gotta go to them. Can you run?”

“I-I don’t think so,” Ben says. “My leg is sprained.”

“That’s fine, we just gotta- we gotta hurry before they leave.”

And that’s when the worry begins to set in. Kenji is panicked. He’s genuinely afraid of being left behind, and Ben realizes that fear could definitely become a reality. It would be so easy to overlook them on an island of this magnitude, but they’re so close to safety. They can’t give up now.

Bumpy squeals beside him, equally anxious, and another fear lodges itself in his mind. What if they don’t let Bumpy on board? What if he’s forced to leave her behind?

“Ben!” Kenji says, and Ben looks up to see he’s already run several feet ahead. “Come on, bro!”

Ben limps after him—he probably shouldn’t be walking in the first place, he realizes—down the street, Bumpy close behind. His fastest pace isn’t necessarily… fast, not compared to Kenji, but he’s just glad he’s moving.

Kenji turns the corner that leads to the stadium, but almost immediately, he comes running back. “Run! Other way!” he yells.

“Wha—” Ben starts, but then it comes into view, rounding the corner behind Kenji: the Tyrannosaurus rex, and it’s on the move, heading straight towards them. It’s probably a bad time for Ben to notice that they’re a lot bigger in real life. 

Before he can move, Kenji puts his arm around his shoulder, helping him run.

They’re not fast enough.

The T. rex’s thundering footsteps shake the ground beneath them, but Ben doesn’t dare look back. If he looks back, he’s dead. He nearly trips over the rubble of what used to be a fountain, and Kenji’s arm is the only thing keeping him upright.

“Left!” Kenji shouts, and Ben is suddenly pulled to the left into an alleyway between two buildings. The T. rex is right on their tails, ramming her head into the alley and forcing the two of them to scramble back further as they narrowly avoid her attack.

They’re just out of reach from her jaws, and her large head can’t fit through the gap, so she retreats out of the alleyway with a roar and charges in the other direction.

Ben lets out the breath he’d been holding, panting heavily as his brain tries to make sense of what just happened. His heart is going a hundred miles a minute, and he honestly feels like he might faint.

Kenji’s there beside him, equally afflicted. He sinks down to sit on the ground, leaning his head against the wall. “Holy shit,” he says, and Ben thinks he’s going to follow his statement up with something else, but he doesn’t, just letting his words hang in the air.

He couldn’t have summed it up better.

“Bumpy,” Ben says suddenly, glancing around and realizing the ankylosaurus isn’t there with them. “Where’s Bumpy?”

“I dunno,” Kenji says. Ben peers around the corner of the alley, scanning the street for her. The T. rex is surveilling about a hundred feet away, looking for her next meal, but there’s no sign of Bumpy.

A whimper rings out into the air, and Ben spots her, lying next to the eradicated fountain, tail caught under a piece of rubble. She tries to pull it out, but it’s no use; the rock is just too heavy for her.

Ben makes a move to exit the alley, but a hand on his wrist stops him.

“Don’t,” Kenji says.

Ben turns back to face him, and he almost regrets it. Kenji looks… afraid. It’s an odd look on him, one Ben hasn’t seen often, at least not in this context.

“I have to,” Ben says. He knows that running out into the open is against his best interest (and against his self-preservation instincts, but he doesn’t want to think about that), but… he just can’t leave Bumpy there. “She’s stuck, I have to help her!”

“You’re not thinking,” says Kenji, voice on the edge of desperation. “If you go out there, you’ll die, and I-I can’t let you die, okay?” His voice tapers, and Ben doesn’t know what to say, or how to feel, or how to even think straight.

“I have to,” he repeats. “You didn’t leave me behind. And I made a promise that I wouldn’t leave her behind.”

Kenji pauses for a long moment like he’s stuck in a thought or a far-off memory, then does something unexpected: he releases Ben’s wrist. “Hurry,” he says. “Be careful.”

Ben nods, swallowing the lump in his throat. He can’t believe he’s really doing this. He wouldn’t have done this a week ago, but a week ago feels like a lifetime ago. Things have changed, for better or for worse he’s yet to find out. Ben steps out of the alley, back pressed against the wall, trying to be as quiet as possible. The T. rex isn’t looking his way, and he just hopes she’s distracted long enough for him to help Bumpy.

When he makes it to the fountain, he kneels down beside Bumpy, who’s still struggling under the rock. “Okay,” he mutters, rolling up his sleeves. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Ben figures his best course of action is not to lift the rock up but to push it off her tail. He takes in a deep breath. “Alright, Bumpy, on three. One… two… three!”

He pushes with all his might—which, if he’s being honest, isn’t much—but the rock doesn’t budge, not one inch. Bumpy cries out in pain. “It’s okay,” Ben says again, breathlessly. He doesn’t know how many times he has to say it before it finally becomes true. “It’s okay.”

He tries again. Nothing. Bumpy’s getting agitated, and he’s running out of time. Again, he pushes, and again, and again. He can’t do it. He’s not strong enough. Suddenly, there’s a hand on his arm, and Kenji’s there beside him, and Ben’s doubt is cast away.

“Together,” says Kenji.

Ben nods as Kenji steadies his hands on the rock. The words go unspoken between them, and they push it together. It falls, hitting the street with a loud thud. Bumpy lifts her tail and climbs on Ben, who wraps his arms around her with a grin.

He looks to Kenji in hopes of maybe a celebratory fist bump or high five, but his gaze is focused elsewhere.

It doesn’t take much sleuthing to figure out what he’s looking at.

The T. rex had heard them, and she’s heading their way, each step shaking the ground, and there’s no doubt in Ben’s mind that this time, she doesn’t intend to let them get away.

Kenji scrambles to his feet and back through the shattered window of the nearest store, but Ben isn’t fast enough. He manages to get to his feet, but not before the T. rex is mere feet away, sniffing the air.

 _Protect Bumpy,_ is the only thought that manages to make itself heard in his mind. Ben stands above her and braces himself, raising his arms defensively and squeezing his eyes shut. He’s not sure if his heart is even beating at this point. _Please, don’t let me die now._

A second passes. Then a minute. Nothing’s happening.

He can hear the T. rex’s heavy breathing, she’s extremely close, but… she’s not doing anything. Hesitantly, Ben opens his eyes and lowers his arms.

He expects to be greeted with the sight of her open jaws, ready to close on him, but instead, she leans down and sniffs him, like she’s sizing him up. But it doesn’t feel aggressive. It’s more like… curiosity.

The T. rex blinks at him then, slowly, and Ben is reminded of something he’d read a long time ago, that if a cat blinks at someone slowly, that means they trust them. Maybe that’s what’s happening here, and the T. rex is like a big cat. A really, really big scary cat.

“Dude,” comes Kenji’s voice from somewhere behind him. His voice sounds muffled, underwater. “Run!”

But Ben’s legs feel glued to the ground, he couldn’t get them to move even if he tried. He can’t even look back.

And then the weirdest thing of all happens: the T. rex nudges her head up against him, almost playfully. Just like a cat—or, he assumes. He’s allergic to cats. And Ben does something he’d never expect himself to do either. With a trembling hand, he reaches up and rests his hand on her head, a sign that he trusts her, too.

“Ben,” Kenji says, sounding frantic. “What are you doing?”

Ben doesn’t answer, not at first. Instead, he just lets this moment play out. “She’s like a cat,” he says finally.

“What?”

He draws his hand away, but it comes back wet, stained in blood. “You’re hurt,” he says quietly, not that she’ll understand him anyway. “That must be why you’re so angry.”

The T. rex coos softly, a far contrast from the roars and bellows he’d heard before. And suddenly, despite her size, she doesn’t seem like a terrifying monster anymore, even though every nerve in his body is telling him he should be scared. She’s… wounded and scared, and alone, just like he had been.

“I trust you,” he says. “A-And I want to help you. I don’t know how yet, but me and Kenji will figure something out… right, Kenji?”

Ben looks back to where Kenji is peeking from over the counter inside the store. He doesn’t say anything, looking more mortified than anything else. He can’t blame him—if he thinks about the situation as a whole, it’s terrifying, but… for some reason, he’s not scared.

The T. rex nuzzles the top of his head, much gentler than he imagined possible, and Ben manages to smile. He scratches under her chin, and she starts to make a low rumbling noise, almost like purring. She really is like a cat.

“You can come out now, Kenji,” Ben calls out. “I don’t think she’s going to hurt us.”

“No way. That thing just tried to kill us!” Kenji’s standing now, still behind the counter, arms crossed.

“If she wanted to kill us, she would’ve already.”

It seems Kenji doesn’t have an argument against that, as he scowls in response and comes out behind the counter and onto the street, albeit apprehensively.

As soon as he’s within five feet of Ben, the T. rex growls, snapping her jaws, and Kenji screams and jumps back.

“Hey, no!” Ben says quickly as the T. rex glares at Kenji. “He’s not going to hurt me, or you. Kenji’s nice, I promise. We can all be friends here.”

“Bro,” Kenji says. “You have the worst taste in friends.”

“You’re my friend.”

“My point exactly.”

The T. rex seemingly decides to give Kenji another chance because she sniffs him, then makes a grunting sound, having made her judgment.

“I think she’s okay with you,” Ben says. “See, we’re all friends now!”

“Look, Ben,” Kenji says. “The whole becoming-friends-with-the-dinosaur thing was sentimental and all, but did you forget we have to get to the helicopter?! We’ve wasted too much time, so let’s go!”

Shit. The helicopter. He’s right, as much as Ben hates to admit it. They have to go now if they ever want to get off this island. But what does he do about the T. rex? And Bumpy? He looks to the lagoon, where he expects to see the helicopter still hovering, but… there’s nothing where there definitely should be something.

“Uh, Kenji?” he says, panic starting to take hold. “Where’d the helicopter go?”

“What?” Kenji asks.

The T. rex suddenly starts making that low rumbling sound again and lifts her head, but it doesn’t sound like purring this time. It sounds like fear.

Then comes the blast.

It’s just one at first, a single gunshot piercing through the silence, but the cacophony of subsequent shots ring in his ears, and it’s so loud Ben can’t even think straight until he stumbles back into the store, to safety.

He looks back up at the scene before him when the T. rex lets out a strangled roar, then falls, hitting the street with a resounding thud, her body riddled with gunshot wounds. Oh, g-d, Ben’s going to be sick. The world spins around him, and he turns away, leaning against the counter to ground himself. He can’t look, he can’t look, he can’t…

“Hey, are you kids okay?” someone shouts. A man, and he’s close.

Ben forces himself to lift his head. The man who’d called out, dressed in what Ben assumes is some sort of military outfit, walks towards them. Behind him is the helicopter, having landed on the street… next to the T. rex’s body. _Oh, g-d, she’s dead,_ he realizes. They’d killed her in cold blood.

As more people spill out of the helicopter and survey the street, the man approaches.

Bumpy squeals and plants herself in front of Ben and Kenji defensively, and the man’s hand immediately goes to the gun on his hip.

“No, no, no, wait,” Kenji says quickly, holding his hands up. “She’s just scared.”

Skeptically, the man lowers his hand, though he watches Bumpy momentarily before leveling his gaze at Kenji and Ben. “Are you kids okay?” he asks again. “Where are your parents?”

Ben can’t formulate a response, not even in his head. Everything is numb, a dull sensation spreading through his body. Thankfully, Kenji has his wits about him. “They’re on the mainland,” he says. “My friend here is hurt. He had a really bad fall, but…” He pauses briefly, looking to Ben. “He needs medical help.”

“Alright, well, let’s get you two on the helicopter,” says the man. “We’ll get you back to the mainland as soon as possible.”

“What about Bumpy?” Kenji asks. When the man looks confused, he elaborates, “The dinosaur.”

“She’ll have to be left behind,” the man says.

“She’s Ben’s best friend, we can’t just leave her behind.”

“I’m sorry, son, but I’m more concerned with the safety of everyone on board than with your friend’s emotional attachment to a dinosaur. And besides, we hardly have the accommodations for a dinosaur of her size.”

“But—”

“She’s coming with.”

Both of them look at Ben, who’s finally found his voice. He falters at the sudden attention but continues regardless. “A-And she’s not dangerous. She’s just like any other animal.” _Just like that T. rex; she didn’t know any better than to hunt for food._ “And most importantly, she’s my best friend, and everyone keeps telling me that I should abandon her, when she’s never abandoned me. So… So, yeah, she’s coming with.”

The man looks dumbfounded, and he opens his mouth to make a rebuttal, when Kenji, grinning, says, “Well, you heard him! She’s coming with!”

The man purses his lips. “Not so fast,” he says. “I’ll make a phone call. Maybe we can make arrangements.”

He exits the store, and Kenji turns to give Ben a small smile of success, but Ben can’t bring himself to do the same. Around the corner, the man’s voice makes itself heard. Ben can only make out brief fragments. “...two kids and an ankylosaurus… already have… bring in for…”

After a few minutes of deliberation, the man returns. “She can come with,” he says, but hardly looks at Bumpy, who is now content to lay by Ben’s feet. “But for her safety and ours, we’re going to be placing her in a cage. That okay?”

Ben nods, though hesitantly. As long as he doesn’t have to leave her behind, he’ll do anything.

A woman ushers them onto the helicopter as Bumpy is secured in her cage in the back. The interior is spacious, with seats lining the walls. Still, the energy about it is… off, even though dozens of people are filtering in and out, all dressed in those same uniforms as the man, with the same weird symbol on their shirts, and there are a bunch of crates in the back near Bumpy. She looks terrified, pawing at the bars of the cage, and it’s only going to get worse once they take off. Ben wishes he could comfort her somehow, but there’s really nothing he can do.

“Ben,” Kenji says. “The others. They’re not here.”

Ben scans the faces of the people inside the helicopter multiple times over, but there’s no sign of Darius, or Sammy, or any of them. That means they must still be on the island somewhere.

“They probably just… flew over them, or something,” continues Kenji, sounding like he’s trying to convince himself more than Ben. “Let me handle this.”

Ben thanks g-d for Kenji’s confidence as he approaches the woman who’d ushered them in, and he sits back in one of the seats. There’s nothing left to do but wait.

As the other people sit down in the helicopter, preparing for takeoff, Ben’s nausea comes back at full force. These are the people who had just shot the T. rex, and they’re all just sitting there as if nothing’s wrong. He closes his eyes and leans his head back, trying to erase the thoughts and the images from his mind, but Kenji’s voice draws his attention.

He’s still standing over by the lady, but he’s yelling now, “—friends are out there, on the docks! Can’t you just land there and pick them up?!”

The woman responds calmly with something Ben can’t hear, but whatever she says sets Kenji off.

“That’s bullshit, and you know it! You can’t just leave four kids to die on this island! My dad will sue you!”

“Young man, please sit down,” comes a different voice. It’s the man from earlier, now standing at the entrance of the helicopter. “We’ll be taking off shortly.”

Ben thinks Kenji will fight back, but he doesn’t. Instead, he scowls and walks back over to Ben, sitting in the seat beside him. He crosses his arms, now openly sulking.

Less than a week ago, if they were in this situation, Ben could imagine him complaining about the lack of first-class seats or some other trivial thing, but his adamance to fight for the others, for _him…_ it gives Ben a newfound respect for him.

The man closes the door, and within minutes, they’re in the air. Ben’s never liked flying, but he knows the feeling lodged in the pit of his stomach isn’t airsickness. Everything feels wrong. He should be happy, relieved that he’s finally going home and escaping from this nightmare, but the only thing he can feel right now is dread. He can’t even begin to process everything that’s happened in the past few hours. From reuniting with Kenji, to the T. rex, to this… it’s all too much, but he needs to be strong. If not for himself, then for Kenji.

“We’re going to get them back,” he tells Kenji, setting a hand on his shoulder.

Kenji doesn’t look at him. “Do you really believe that?”

Ben doesn’t know. He wants to believe it wholeheartedly, that Darius and Yaz and Sammy and Brooklynn will all be safe, and they’ll all be reunited soon. But he knows how fast things can change, especially on Isla Nublar. “Yes,” he says. It’s not a lie, not exactly. He thinks if maybe he says it out loud, then he’ll start to believe it. “Because we’re going to get them back together.”

Kenji glances at him and smiles weakly, and it’s enough to make Ben want to smile, too. “Together,” he repeats, setting his hand on top of Ben’s.

They sit like that for a moment until Ben clears his throat and pulls his hand away. “So, uh… did you mean what you said about your dad suing?”

“Honestly? No,” Kenji says. “You know, when I was younger, I was always getting into trouble because I thought it would make my dad pay attention to me, but… it never worked. And even now, I could’ve died, and I don’t know if he would even care.”

And that’s when it feels like Ben’s seeing Kenji, the _real_ Kenji, for the first time. A boy who plays the part of the fearless, overconfident leader, but deep down, he’s just like the rest of them. Scared, and vulnerable, and lonely.

“I get that,” says Ben. “My dad left when I was young, so… it was always just me and my mom. And-And, hey, once we get back to the mainland, you—and everyone else, of course—are invited to my house. My mom makes these extraordinary matzah balls that she usually only makes on Passover, but I think I could convince her to make them for the special occasion.”

Kenji snorts. “Yeah, ‘special occasion,’ you could call it that. A _Congrats-On-Not-Getting-Eaten-By-A-Dinosaur_ celebration.”

Ben can’t help but laugh, despite everything he’s feeling. “So, you’d like that?” he asks.

“What, spending time with my best friends and free food?” Kenji says. “Of course I’d like that. And I bet your mom’s matzah is killer.”

As they talk, Ben begins to feel better, more at ease, because there’s something about Kenji that Ben likes, when he’s not putting on that arrogant facade. And it becomes easier to believe that everything’s going to be fine, that they’ll get their friends back, because they’re going to do it together.


	3. i’ll carry your world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The campers discover something that changes everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi
> 
> 1) im so scared for s2 😭 like actually  
> 2) this entire story has been written so if anything ends up being the same as in the show we’ll just chalk it up to me being a genius (/j)  
> 3) again i am sorry for any scientific inaccuracies but sometimes u just gotta do things for the plot

Everything is awful.

Yaz watches, dumbfoundedly, as the helicopter flies over them, back the way it came, and just like that, their only chance at getting off this island has slipped between their fingers like sand. Brooklynn and Darius shout and wave their arms frantically, trying to signal down the helicopter, but it’s no use.

They hadn’t been fast enough.

But maybe it’s for the better that they hadn’t made it to the helicopter. Sammy had immediately recognized the logo on the side as Mantah Corp’s logo, and Yaz isn’t a detective, but she figures that whatever business they were carrying out here, it wasn’t good.

“What do we do now?” asks Sammy when the helicopter is long gone.

Yaz glances at the other three campers, and what she sees is defeat written across their faces because now, for the first time, they have nowhere else to turn. No other avenues or options. Game over.

The only thing that gives her any semblance of hope is the intercom message. It had rung throughout the forest, clear as a bell, unmistakably in Kenji’s voice, and it had stopped all of them in their tracks. And then he mentioned _two_ people, and none of them had said it, but they were all thinking the same thing. _Ben._ It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s the only thing that makes sense to Yaz, that, by some miracle, he had survived. Who else could it be?

Still, she doesn’t want to let herself believe it. It’s not guaranteed that he’s alive.

“Main Street,” Darius finally speaks up. “If Kenji and… If Kenji’s there, then that’s where we have to go.”

-

They make it to Main Street in an hour.

It’s completely desolate. Destroyed. It’s like someone took a wrecking ball and demolished half of the buildings. And most terrifying of all, a dead T. rex lies in the middle of the street. Something bad had happened here, and Yaz isn’t sure she wants to know what. That little seed of worry plants itself in her mind again. What if Kenji and Ben had something to do with this? What if they were too late?

“Kenji?” Brooklynn calls out. “Hello?”

There’s no response. No noise at all, except for the wind whistling, a constant reminder that they’re alone.

“Come on, let’s check inside the Innovation Center,” says Darius, standing at the top of the steps in front of the building, one of the only ones that remain untouched by the chaos.

They check inside. Up and down. Twice, three times, four times, but there’s nothing and no one; no trace that anyone was inside since the evacuation.

Hope is running low that Kenji— _and Ben,_ Yaz lets herself think—is still here, or even alive at this point, but the campers decide to try one last-ditch effort: splitting up. Having Brooklynn and Sammy search the lagoon, while Darius and Yaz continue to search Main Street. She thinks Darius has figured out that the lagoon is still a sore spot for her and kept her away from it for that reason.

As soon as Brooklynn and Sammy have headed off in the direction of the lagoon, Darius sits at the top of the steps, resting his head in his hands. Yaz sits beside him, not saying anything at first. She’s never been good at the whole ‘comforting people’ thing, but Darius seems to need it right now. Everything about this situation is screwed up. Darius is the youngest of them all, yet… he’s been through so much. She can’t even imagine how he’s feeling right now.

“Are you okay?” she asks, but she thinks she already knows the answer.

“I’m fine,” Darius says, shaking his head.

“You know, you don’t have to be strong all the time.” That’s something Yaz had to learn, too. She thought that if she bottled up her feelings and never let anyone in, then… nothing could hurt her. But heartache had found its way in anyway. “It’s okay to let the rest of us take the weight sometimes.”

Darius lifts his head, looking at the park beyond. “How did everything get so messed up?” he asks. “I-I had this whole idea in my head of what Jurassic World was going to be like. It was supposed to be perfect. And now look.”

Yaz follows his gaze to the empty street, the vacant stadium, and the silence, the silence that’s louder than any noise could be. It always seems to come back to the quiet. This place was meant to be groundbreaking, an eighth wonder of the world, and a cesspool for innovation, but it had ended up being the opposite. Eddie had been right about one thing: greed had gotten in the way, and they’d created monsters here.

“I just… wanted so badly for everything to go the way I planned,” Darius continues, fidgeting with the front of his shirt. “But life found a way to ruin it.”

“You’ve helped us all more than you could know, Darius,” Yaz says. “If it wasn’t for you, I would be dead. So would Brooklynn and Sammy. And I know you blame yourself for what happened with Ben and Kenji, but now we have a chance to find them. Things are gonna turn out right.”

“But what if things don’t turn out right? What if we don’t find them?”

“We will.” _We have to._ “I promise.”

There’s a long period of silence, and Yaz finds herself thinking over Darius’s words, about what he’d expected Jurassic World to be. There’s so much about this place she hadn’t expected. She hadn’t planned on danger, so many near-death experiences, and a broken ankle.

She hadn’t expected Sammy.

She thought she knew about life and about people, that they were predictable, but… Sammy had subverted every single one of her expectations. In a good way. Sammy is kind, and caring, and she’s not afraid to show her vulnerable side. At first, Yaz had thought that was a sign of weakness, but now she realizes it’s a sign of strength, and she’d never planned on letting her walls down, letting someone else in, but she doesn’t regret it.

And everything had gotten so messed up, but Yaz thinks that no matter what happens between the two of them, they’ll always find their way back to each other.

Sammy is everything to her, and she has no idea how to deal with that. How does she even go about telling her? _Does_ she tell her? Or does she let that feeling simmer and boil over like everything else in her life?

“Thank you, Yaz,” Darius says finally, but he still looks a little lost, like he’s in his own world. “So… what do we do now?”

“We start looking,” she says, using the shock prod to help herself stand, and Darius nods his acknowledgment. “You check the stores on the right side of the street. I’ll check the ones on the left.”

She descends the stairs, trying to shift her weight to her non-injured leg. By now, most of the pain has numbed into a dull stabbing sensation, and if she concentrates hard enough, it doesn’t hurt at all. Yaz isn’t sure if that’s a good or bad thing, but she doesn’t have time to contemplate it.

When she enters the first store on the left side of the street, she’s immediately on high alert. The shop is a wreck—not that that’s out of place, but it looks more like someone trashed the place rather than the mess being a byproduct of what took place on the street.

It’s a gift store; she can tell that by the display of novelty snow globes and toppled racks of personalized keychains, but the thing that immediately catches her attention is the _light_ coming from underneath the bathroom door. There’s a _light on!_ And that means someone was here, or… is here.

Yaz moves towards the door. “Hello?” she calls out cautiously. There’s no response, no noise to indicate that there’s someone inside, but just to be safe, she says, “I’m coming in now,” and twists the doorknob, pushing open the door.

The bathroom is empty, but that doesn’t drive away the hope in her mind, because whoever was in here had left the light on when none of the other lights in the shop were on. And they’d left something behind.

Sitting on the countertop next to the sink is an open first aid kit, but that’s not what stands out to her. Her eyes travel to the wristwatch lying beside it. Yaz doesn’t understand. She picks it up, turning it over in her hands, when she sees the engraving on the back of the face.

_B.P._

Her heart skips a beat. It seems too good to be true. It can’t be true, can it? That this is Ben’s watch, and for whatever reason, he’d left it behind, and he was _here,_ and _alive,_ and _not dead,_ because how else could this have gotten here? So, not only was Kenji here, Ben was, too, and this is a sure confirmation of it. And now, they have to be on the helicopter. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

She has to tell Darius.

Yaz rushes out of the store. “Darius!” she shouts, spotting him standing among the rubble of a collapsed building on the other side of the street. “Darius, come here!”

Darius looks up, an expression of both worry and confusion crossing his face, and they both move towards each other, but Darius reaches her first.

“Look,” she says, holding out the watch for Darius to see. He takes it from her, looking puzzled, until he, too, sees the engraving and runs his thumb over it.

“Is-Is that—”

Yaz nods. “They’re alive. Both of them.”

Darius smiles, and it’s like seeing the life return to his eyes. “I can’t believe it,” he says. A single tear trickles down his cheek, but this time it’s not out of hurt, or sadness, or any bad thing, because their friends are _alive._ That seems odd to think, but it’s true, and there’s no denying it. Darius holds Ben’s watch gingerly, as if it might turn to sand if he grips it too tightly.

“We should tell Brooklynn and Sammy,” Yaz says as Darius straps the watch around his wrist and wipes the stray tears from his face.

“Yeah,” he says. “I-I just can’t believe this is happening. This is happening, right?”

“This is happening.”

Yaz doesn’t want to jinx it, but it seems like things are finally going right. Sure, they might be stuck on Killer Dinosaur Island, but if Ben and Kenji got on the helicopter, then… they can get help. They can be rescued.

The two of them decide to use the intercom to tell Brooklynn and Sammy to come back so they can break the news to them. Darius fidgets with the watch’s strap the whole time, like he’s trying to ground himself in reality.

When Brooklynn enters the Innovation Center, shortly followed by Sammy, they’re both out of breath.

“What is it?” Brooklynn asks. She looks around, expecting to see something.

“Ben and Kenji are both alive,” says Darius. He holds up his wrist, showing them the watch. “And they were here.”

“They must’ve left in a hurry when the helicopter got here,” Yaz tacks on because that’s the best rationalization she can come up with. They’d abandoned everything so they could get to safety.

“But… why would Mantah Corp pick up a few kids?” Sammy asks, coming to stand beside Yaz. She looks the most nervous of them all, eyebrows drawn together. “They’re not exactly the nicest folks.”

“Does it matter why?” asks Darius. “Ben and Kenji are _alive,_ and they’re probably back on the mainland by now! Which means they can get help!” When the others don’t look convinced, he adds, “Plus… we’ve got a working intercom system!”

“Maybe you could, like, rewire it into a radio so we can contact people,” Brooklynn suggests.

“What?”

“What?” Brooklynn echoes. “Don’t you know how to do that? Aren’t you the video game nerd?”

“Okay, first of all, video games are completely different from reverse engineering something into a radio. And I thought you were the Internet superstar or whatever, so shouldn’t _you_ know how to do that?”

As the two of them bicker, Yaz looks to Sammy, who still looks anxious, but she can’t think of any words of encouragement. For some reason, when it comes to Sammy, she’s left speechless. So instead, she reaches for Sammy’s hand, because it’s the only way she knows how to express the myriad of feelings inside her.

And… she likes holding Sammy’s hand. It’s rough, calloused from working on the farm every day, yet comforting and familiar, and holding her hand is _normal._ If she closes her eyes and just focuses on the feeling of Sammy’s hand in hers, she can pretend that she’s not trapped on this stupid island, that she’s back at home, and everything’s fine.

They’re so close to getting back to that normal, too. They’ve made it this far. It’s almost like she wants to survive out of spite now, to show this island that no matter what it’s thrown at them, they can overcome it.

They spend thirty minutes in the office where the intercom is located, and in those thirty minutes, they get absolutely nowhere. They’ve tried about every option, but any message they send seems to only broadcast within the park, or not at all—nothing to indicate that anyone else is receiving their messages. The only thing their messages do seem to attract is Compys, who Yaz watches roam the street on the huge display of monitors showing the security camera footage.

Brooklynn groans, slumping back in a chair. “Doesn’t this thing come with, like, an instruction manual or something?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Darius says, but it feels like his hope is waning, too.

By now, the best option seems to be just sitting and waiting for help to arrive. They’re drawing unwanted attention to themselves this way, and Yaz worries that attention might be from the dinosaurs. Toro and the Indominus Rex are still out there, and who knows what else? It’s only a matter of time before one of them comes looking for fresh food.

And thinking of food, Yaz’s stomach growls. She can’t remember the last time she had a proper meal. “Maybe we should take a break,” she suggests. “I can go and find some food. There’s gotta be something in one of those buildings.”

“Are you sure you’re okay to walk?” Sammy asks, looking at Yaz questioningly.

She makes a move towards the office door, shock stick in hand. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll come with you.” Sammy’s voice stops her, and Yaz looks back. “I-If that’s okay with you?”

“Yeah,” Yaz says. “That’s fine.”

Sammy smiles. It’s so nice to see her smile again, and even nicer to be the one to make her smile.

“Me and Brook will keep trying to figure this out,” Darius says, hardly looking up the panel of buttons and switches.

 _“Brook?”_ says Brooklynn, raising an eyebrow at him. “That is _not_ going to be a thing.”

Darius gives her a flustered smile. “Noted.”

Yaz and Sammy exit the office, then descend the stairs in front of the Innovation Center, while Sammy shields her gaze with her hand, making it a point not to look at the T. rex. “That thing gives me the creeps,” she says with a shiver. Yaz nods her agreement. It’s disconcerting to think that there’s a bigger, badder monster out there, one that could take down even the king of the dinosaurs.

They enter the gift shop—Yaz had recalled there being bags of food strewn across the floor—and immediately begin piling all the food they can find into Jurassic World drawstring bags. _How tacky,_ Yaz thinks, glancing around at all of the products in here with Jurassic World’s logo cheaply slapped on them. _Who even buys this crap?_

“Ooh, look!” Sammy muses from across the shop. Yaz looks from her spot by the counter to see her holding up some sort of small figurine. “A Sinoceratops! Isn’t it cute?”

“Yeah, sure,” says Yaz, but she smiles despite herself. She can’t help it; Sammy’s happiness is infectious.

Sammy drops the figurine in the bag and gives Yaz a knowing smile in return. “Maybe I should get one for everyone. Y’know, as a keepsake, so we can always remember the time we spent together.”

“I’m not sure that this was exactly a fun time for everyone,” Yaz says, pulling the strings on her own bag and closing it. “More like a nightmare.”

“No,” says Sammy, coming to Yaz’s side. “It wasn’t always fun, but… you can’t tell me there was nothing good that came out of this.”

 _You,_ Yaz thinks. _There was you._

She says nothing.

“Come on, the underground river? The zipline? None of that was good?” Sammy asks.

“Not really.”

“Well, I got the friends of a lifetime out of this. And even if no one else feels the same way, I… I’m going to cherish these memories forever.”

Yaz looks away. _I’m going to, too._

 _“And_ look at these adorable friendship bracelets I found!” Sammy continues, dangling a pair of bracelets in front of Yaz. “Look, this one’s got a brachiosaurus! And the other one’s got a stegosaurus!”

“I’ll take the stegosaurus,” Yaz says.

Sammy looks up, like she’s shocked Yaz had said that. Yaz is shocked with her bluntness, too.

“You’re my best friend, Sammy.” And she means it more than she’s ever meant anything before. With everything that happened, this feels like their fresh start. They can forget about everything, about Mantah Corp and the spying, and just be… content. It’s odd to think that she could be happy in a situation like this, but she can finally breathe. Kenji and Ben will get help, and they’ll get out of here, and she doesn’t intend on letting Sammy go any time soon.

“You’re my best friend, too.” Sammy grins as Yaz holds out her arm, and Sammy straps the bracelet around her wrist. It feels right. Everything about Sammy is right. And now, _now_ is the perfect time to tell her exactly how she feels, while they’re alone and safe and okay.

“Sammy,” she begins hesitantly. “There’s… There’s something I should tell you.” _It’s important. And if I don’t say it now, I don’t know if I ever will._ “I…”

She’s cut off by a low bellow coming from outside the gift shop. Both of them turn to look at what the commotion is all about.

“Oh no,” Sammy murmurs.

On the street is a pack of dinosaurs—what species, Yaz doesn’t know; they look like a strange combination of a T. rex and a velociraptor—but they’re not paying attention to Yaz and Sammy. Instead, they’re circled around the dead T. rex.

“They’re… feeding,” Yaz says slowly, the puzzle starting to come together in her head. But one piece doesn’t quite fit. Whatever had killed the T. rex had left without feeding. Could it have been the Indominus? She supposes it doesn’t really matter, because they have a bigger issue at hand—the other dinosaurs of the island are now coming to take their share. “We have to leave. Now.”

“Where do we go?” Sammy asks.

Yaz looks around frantically, searching for a way out that won’t put them in peril. “There’s-There’s gotta be another exit, or something,” she says, entering the back room, and just her luck, there’s a back door.

Sammy reaches the door before she does, prying it open, but she only makes it halfway out the door before she screams and scrambles back, landing on the ground. Yaz can’t process what had just happened when a dinosaur—the same kind that had been on the street—sticks its head in the door, and she’s forced to jump back. It can’t fit through entirely; its upper body gets caught in the frame, thank g-d. With each failed attempt to get in, it gets more and more frustrated, and eventually, it retreats, realizing that this isn’t worth it.

Yaz slams the door shut behind the dinosaur and locks it, as if that will do anything. Guess that rules out the back door, too.

Sammy gets to her feet, breathing heavily. “What do we do?” she asks, still a bit shaken.

“We get the hell out of here,” Yaz says. _Somehow._

“Wouldn’t it be a better idea just to wait it out in here? Y’know, where there aren’t any scary dinos?”

“Wait _what_ out? They’re not leaving any time soon.” She gestures over her shoulder with her thumb. “And Darius and Brooklynn are still in the Innovation Center. They’re not safe either. _Main Street_ isn’t safe.”

She doesn’t want to leave it behind, the place that could be their only chance at contacting another person, but it’s their only option. If they stay, they’ll be killed, and she doesn’t want to die trapped in here, not now, not when they’re so close to safety.

Yaz grits her teeth and lifts the shock prod, clicking it on and watching the electricity flicker between the two ends as she faces the door. They’re surrounded with no way out, so she’ll have to make a way out, even if that means fighting. Realistically, she knows she can’t take on one dinosaur, let alone however many more are out there, but what else can she do?

“Yaz, no,” Sammy says, clearly catching on to her plan.

It’s something about Sammy that makes Yaz lose her resolve, that makes her give up her stubbornness and give into common sense, just with two simple words. It _would_ be stupid to go charging out there with no real plan, but… no, she needs to think this through.

She cracks open the door, peering outside to see what they’re up against. Several more of those weird dinosaurs are mere feet away, stalking and sniffing for their next meal. If there was a way she could distract them somehow…

Yaz doesn’t have time to come up with anything before the explosion comes, shaking the ground beneath her, and knocking both her and Sammy back. Smoke clouds her vision as she hits the floor hard, ears ringing. Faintly, she hears Sammy cough, but nothing else is processing. _This is it,_ she thinks, barely able to hear her own thoughts. _This is the end._

The smoke clears.

Two figures enter through the door, both blurry, their features indistinct, but Yaz can’t do anything but roll over, practically coughing up a lung at the rate she tries to get fresh air circulating. Finally, her vision focuses, and standing above her is Darius, holding out a hand. Beside her, Brooklynn is helping Sammy to her feet.

“Wha—” she begins, taking Darius’s hand nonetheless, but he cuts her off.

“We have to go _now,”_ he says urgently, throwing his arm around her shoulder as soon as she’s on her feet. He picks up the shock prod and hands it to her. “That explosion only incapacitated a few of them, but there’s dozens more.”

The four of them exit out the back of the shop, and Yaz sees what exactly had taken place. The dinosaurs that had been in the back are now lying on the ground, unmoving, but there’s no doubt that the explosion, especially at that magnitude, had drawn the attention of the dinosaurs on the street.

“The river!” says Brooklynn, pointing ahead through the dense mass of trees and jungle in front of them, and if Yaz squints, she can see water about a football field’s length away. “There’s a boat on the shore!”

She’s right; lying upside down on the shore is a large canoe, the paddles right beside it. Yaz has seriously had enough of boats for one lifetime, but this could be the only way to safety. Wherever the river leads, it has to be better than Main Street.

They run through the forest, and Yaz just does her best to keep up when the heavy footsteps begin to thud behind them. She doesn’t look back. Ahead of her, Sammy does.

“What _are_ those things?” she shouts breathlessly?

“Allosauruses!” Darius says. “I-I didn’t know Jurassic World even had these.”

They make it to the shore of the river in record time. Though out of breath, Yaz helps Darius flip the canoe over, running on pure adrenaline at this point. Together, they push it into the water. She doesn’t waste any time looking at the pack of allosauruses that have pursued them; one second could mean the difference between life and death.

Brooklynn and Sammy grab the paddles, and as soon as all four of them are in the canoe, Darius and Sammy in front, Yaz and Brooklynn in back, they begin rowing hurriedly down the river.

One of the allosauruses roars then, and Yaz allows herself to look at what they’re up against for the first time. At least ten dinosaurs have followed them and are continuing to follow them, running along the shore, and Yaz’s heart pounds wildly in her chest. _We are so screwed._

An allosaurus steps into the water behind them, and Yaz and Brooklynn exchange a look.

“Darius?” Brooklynn asks, her grip visibly tightening on her paddle. “Can allosauruses swim?”

“Uh,” he says nervously, glancing back to where the allosaurus is now fully submerged in the river, and others are following suit. “I’m gonna go with yes!”

“Row faster!” Yaz yells. The current isn’t fast enough to carry them on its own, and the allosauruses are hot in pursuit. One of them snaps its jaws at the back of the boat, but Brooklynn lifts the paddle and smacks it over the head. This only seems to anger it more, as it roars and tries to attack again. Yaz assists Brooklynn this time, jabbing it in the face with the prongs of the shock stick.

“Guys? Where’s the rest of the river?!” Sammy shouts, and Yaz looks back at the front of the boat. The river ahead diverges into two paths, but both suddenly drop off about fifty feet ahead.

“It’s the waterfall!” Darius says, panic setting in his voice. “It’s a four hundred foot drop!”

They’re dead, they are _so dead._ They have to get out of the boat, but if they do, even though it would be impossible to jump to the shore, then they’ll be allosaurus food. If they don’t, they’re still dead, but considering even the allosauruses are now retreating at the sight of the drop-off, Yaz is guessing the latter is worse.

The current picks up, and the rushing water takes them to the path on the right before they can steer in the other direction, if it even matters. The sound of the water builds to a roar in Yaz’s ears as the drop-off gets closer and closer. There’s nothing they can do.

She braces herself as the others scream. The moment they go over the edge is a blur, and she hits the water much sooner than she expects. Well, she doesn’t expect to actually feel herself hitting the water at all, but she’s submerged, and instead of a rushing tide around her, the water is calm. Scarily calm.

Yaz surfaces. They’re in some sort of… cove, or something, with a large bay of water around them, and ahead, it eventually narrows back into the river. Above her, the waterfall rises only about thirty feet.

And she has to admit, the scene is… oddly beautiful. The bay is shallow enough that she can touch the bottom with her feet, and the floor of it glows a bright blue color, light emitting from a plant that’s scattered across the bay.

The sound of coughing draws her attention to Brooklynn, who’s pulled herself up onto the shore, lying drenched and hacking up water. Beside Yaz, Darius emerges, and finally, Sammy, both of them soaked as well.

“Is everyone okay?” Sammy asks.

“We almost weren’t,” Brooklynn says, voice hoarse. “Look.”

She points past them, to the left of the waterfall, and behind the trees is another waterfall, much larger than the one they’d gone over, but it doesn’t stop at thirty feet; it goes lower. That must be the four-hundred-foot waterfall Darius had been talking about. And if they would’ve been unfortunate enough to go over that waterfall instead of this one, they would be as good as dead.

Brooklynn helps Yaz and Sammy onto the shore while Darius remains in the water, marveling at the bay. “Dinoflagellates!” he exclaims, toeing at the bioluminescent algae with his foot. “I wonder if these ones are toxic…”

The three girls stare at Darius, and Brooklynn immediately goes to dry herself off at the thought of being drenched in toxic algae.

“They’re not,” he says quickly, seeing their reactions, albeit with an unsure laugh. “If they were, we would all be dead. Still, though, I wonder if these grew naturally or if they were genetically engineered…”

Yaz huffs and wrings her hair out. They should’ve been dead a million times over, but they’ve gotten lucky. She just hopes that luck won’t run out any time soon. And now that the adrenaline from all the _almost-dying_ has worn off, the pain in her leg begins to return at full force.

She doesn’t know how much longer she can take it. They need to get off this island, and soon. Yaz gazes at the sky, as if she’ll see something that’ll bring their safety, just by staring long enough—a plane, a helicopter, anything.

Sammy’s voice brings her back down to Earth. “So what was that explosion?” she asks.

Darius, who’s now climbed onto the shore as well, answers, “Oh, uh… you remember that trick we pulled with Toro in the tunnels? Same concept. Turns out if you apply a lot of pressure to a fire extinguisher…” He mimics an explosion with his hands. “It was nothing, really.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Darius,” says Brooklynn. “It was genius.”

Darius rubs the back of his neck, looking away, embarrassed. “Was it?”

“Well, it saved me and Yaz,” Sammy says, glancing at Yaz with a small smile and twisting her bracelet around her wrist. Yaz looks down at her own bracelet, a constant reminder—a _welcome_ reminder—of Sammy.

She nods, then lays back on the ground. For the time being, they’re not in a rush to get anywhere. Main Street is currently out of commission, and so is the idea of contacting anyone. Plus, it’s getting dark, and the sun begins to fall below the earth, reflecting a golden haze back across the water. _It would be nice to catch up on some much-needed sleep…_ Yaz thinks.

They’re all exhausted. They’ve barely gotten a moment of rest since the Indominus Rex first escaped. It feels so easy to just let sleep take over, so that’s what Yaz does. She sinks into the feeling of the grass below her, letting herself drift away into sleep.


	4. for all the love you’ve left behind, you can have mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Kenji find themselves tangled up in something much bigger than they’d expected. Yaz and Sammy have a conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry it took me a month to update this lmfao but yea final Big chapter before the epilogue which is not very long
> 
> 1) i have not watched jurassic park or world  
> 2) the vast majority of this was written before s2 dropped, the exception being the parts i edited  
> 3) im writing another series so yay it will be more kenji & darius focused  
> 4) gay ppl
> 
> enjoy :3

There’s no reason Ben should be this anxious.

He’s going home, finally, and after everything that’s happened, they’re guaranteed to be safe. But for some reason, he can’t shake that feeling of unease, like a ticking clock hanging over his head, but he doesn’t know what it’s counting down to.

Kenji appears to feel the same way. He leans forward in his seat, tapping his foot repetitively against the floor of the helicopter, and he doesn’t say a word to Ben the entire time, not since their conversation earlier. The nervous energy practically radiates off of him, and even though their shared feeling can only mean disaster, Ben can’t help but find comfort in knowing he’s not alone.

Because through everything, no matter how difficult things had gotten, there had always been Kenji, shining through like a light in the fog, a beacon of hope that told him things were going to be alright, because he had Kenji by his side.

And Bumpy’s great and all, but she really can’t hold a candle to Kenji. She probably can’t hold anything. Kenji just has this thing about him that makes him so…

_Okay, I’m getting off track,_ Ben thinks. Where was he? Imminent doom and destruction, or something like that.

He should be happy, but everything feels like it’s wrong, and the pit in his stomach only grows with each passing second.

Before he has a chance to share his concern with Kenji, the pilot announces they’ll be landing shortly.

Ben turns to Kenji to gauge his reaction, but he only furrows his eyebrows and says nothing. _Landing shortly?_ That doesn’t make sense at all. They’ve only been in the air for, what, half an hour at the most? Ben doesn’t know his geography that well, but he’s pretty sure it takes longer than thirty minutes to fly from a remote island back to the mainland.

Ten minutes later, the helicopter lands on a helipad, and Ben peers out the window. They’re outside a large hangar, connected to an even larger building, but… the rest of their surroundings are desolate. No roads, no signs, not even any other structures. Just a thick expanse of jungle that obscures his view of anything further than a few hundred feet north. Where _are_ they?

The doors on both sides of the helicopter open, and Ben is immediately hit with a whiff of tropical breeze. To the south is nothing but pure blue ocean. The other people in the helicopter get to work, lifting the crates and carrying them off the helicopter.

“Stay in your seats, boys.” The man from earlier approaches them, carrying a crate of his own. “We’ll just be making a quick stop here, then we’ll get you two to the mainland.”

He exits the helicopter, and once he’s gone, Kenji speaks for the first time, sounding way too calm and collected for what he’s saying. “We need to get off this helicopter.”

Ben glances over at him, noticing he’s already unfastened his seatbelt, looking ready to bolt at any minute. “What?”

“Mantah Corp.”

_“What?”_

“Look at the symbol on all their boxes, and their shirts. That thing’s called a manticore. A.K.A. Mantah Corp!”

Ben’s head spins, and he looks to see that same lion-dragon-type animal that was on the man’s shirt, printed on the crates’ sides. Kenji’s right. He’s not exactly sure what a manticore looks like, but he figures it’s probably pretty close to that symbol. Still, if they’re really on a Mantah Corp helicopter… “That-That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Ben, just think about it. You don’t find it suspicious that immediately after Jurassic World is abandoned, a helicopter comes in, guns blazing? They didn’t even look for any survivors. And why do you think they let Bumpy come with? Because, no offense, but I don’t think it was out of the kindness of their hearts! Think about it!”

Ben hardly registers a word Kenji’s saying as he continues to rant on. He should’ve known. Why _would_ they let a dinosaur on board? How had he been so stupid to think that they would let him take Bumpy home? He’d been so caught up in the thought of salvation that he’d just wanted to believe for a minute that things were going to work out, even if that meant blinding himself to logic.

He looks to the back of the helicopter, scanning the remaining crates for Bumpy’s cage, but it’s nowhere to be seen. _They took her._ Ben hurriedly gets to his feet, ready to make a run for it, but before he can, Kenji points over his shoulder with his thumb towards the back of the helicopter. Something goes unspoken between them, the acknowledgment that Ben has to get Bumpy back somehow.

“There’s an emergency exit back there,” says Kenji. “But it’s your call.”

The way Ben sees it, they have two options: one, stay on the helicopter and go back to the mainland, or two, get off the helicopter and get Bumpy back, but what comes after that is unknown. And he can’t risk Kenji’s safety like that.

“I’m going alone,” he says resolutely.

Kenji frowns, not expecting that answer. “What? No, you’re not. I’m coming with you.”

“No, Kenji,” Ben says. He can’t look at him, because he knows all of his resolve will crumble if he looks at him. “You need to get back to the mainland. Get help for the others. I’ll save Bumpy. I’m the one who brought her along, so… I’m the one who needs to do this.”

“You can’t—”

“I can do it. You have to get back home.”

“What about that whole ‘together’ thing?” Kenji asks. “Did that mean nothing? We didn’t come this far, go through everything we’ve gone through, just to abandon each other now.”

Ben huffs. It’s true; he’d said they would get their friends back together, but doing _this_ together means putting Kenji in danger. He knows Mantah Corp doesn’t care about childrens’ safety—Sammy’s situation had proven that—and if something happened to Kenji because of his decision, Ben couldn’t forgive himself.

“I’m not letting you do this alone, okay?” Kenji says, putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder, and he knows by this point, there’s no changing Kenji’s mind. “We’re a team. We do this together.”

“Yeah,” Ben says finally. “Yeah, okay.” He’s figured out by now that this is Kenji’s way of saying that he cares about him, even if he won’t say it, but the mere thought makes Ben’s heart swell.

“Besides,” says Kenji, smiling. “I’d say we make a pretty good team, don’t we?”

And Ben has to smile, too, because he’s got to admit—they do make a good team.

He glances over at the workers; none of them are paying any attention to him and Kenji. That’s their chance to get out of here. He watches as Kenji pries open the emergency exit door, then gestures for Ben to come over.

Ben takes in a deep breath. In a second, he’ll step off this helicopter, and there’ll be no going back. He’s making this decision for himself, and for Bumpy. She doesn’t deserve to be kept here with some shady bio-engineering company, and if Ben can’t bring her back to the mainland, she at least deserves to go back to Isla Nublar where she can be free, even if that means… leaving her behind.

“You ready?” Kenji asks.

Ben stares at the sand below the helicopter, and the ocean expands far beyond, stretching out to the skyline. “Not really,” he admits, gripping the door handle tightly. He’s scared, _terrified,_ but he’s done letting his fear control his life. He’s doing this.

“Here goes nothing.” Kenji steps out of the helicopter, but he’s met with a steep drop-off and falls face-first into the sand. He rolls over, spitting sand out of his mouth. “Watch… Watch your step.”

Ben jumps out of the helicopter, landing on his feet, while Kenji stands, brushing the sand off his clothes. The two of them duck behind a large rock, out of sight of the Mantah Corp workers, and Ben holds his breath, as if releasing it would alert everyone of their presence.

After a minute or so, Ben builds up the courage to peek over the top of the rock. That colossal building reminds him of the genetics lab on Isla Nublar, and this thought makes him realize: he has no clue where they are. It’s another island, he knows that, but he also remembers passing several different islands on the initial ferry ride. They could be anywhere in the Pacific Ocean right now.

He watches as the workers lift the cages and crates in the direction of the building and scans among them for Bumpy, but he can’t spot her. They must’ve taken her inside already.

“So… what’s the plan?” Kenji asks from beside him.

That catches Ben off-guard. “Uh…”

“Dude, please tell me you have a plan.”

“I mean, not really,” Ben says. “I honestly didn’t think that far ahead.”

Kenji says nothing, and Ben figures now is as good a time as any to come up with a plan, but the best idea he has is to wait. If they try to make a run for it now, they’ll be caught, and that’ll jeopardize everything, their only chance at saving Bumpy.

So he waits. And waits. And waits. He spends an eternity crouched in that position, behind the rock, just watching as, one by one, the workers disappear inside the building. The pit in Ben’s stomach returns and intensifies tenfold when the only person to come back outside is the man who’d talked to them. He gets on the helicopter, and that’s when Ben and Kenji look at each other knowingly. It’s time to go.

Ben likes that about them, how they can just share a look and understand what the other is thinking—actually, that might be an exaggeration because Ben can’t say he ever truly understands what’s going through Kenji’s brain. But it’s the sentiment that counts.

Silently, Kenji points at a door on the west side of the building, in an area desolate of people. And then they run down the shore, and whenever Ben stumbles, Kenji is there to catch him.

When they make it to the door, both of them pant and wheeze for air. The combination of the heat and the humidity and _running_ in general is not a good mix. As soon as the two of them catch their breaths, Ben pulls the door open and is met with a rush of cool air.

“Air conditioning,” Kenji gasps dramatically, stepping into the building, clearly trying to savor as much of the cold air as he possibly can. “Sweet, sweet air conditioning.”

Yeah, that’s something Ben’s never taking for granted again.

The first thing he notices about the interior of the facility is that it’s quiet. Eerily quiet. The door leads them to a long hallway, and Ben thinks maybe he should hear footsteps or quiet conversation floating down the halls, but there’s nothing. Nothing except the echoes of his and Kenji’s steps as they set off, and the electric hum that’s built up to a roar in his ears.

The second thing he notices is how bright it is. Ben’s sure his corneas burn with how intense the combination of the artificial lights and white-painted walls are, and his comparison of this building and the genetics lab feels more justified now.

Ben’s not sure what he’s supposed to be looking for. Maybe a sign that says _Bumpy the ankylosaurus this way!_ and arrows pointing them in the right direction. They just need to find out where they’re taking those crates and get Bumpy back. Really, they need to get back to the hangar. There has to be something there that’ll give them a clue.

That sounds simple enough in theory, but this place is a maze. Each intersection looks identical, with no differences in the hallways and where they lead to. It’s all a confusing, jumbled mess.

After the millionth turn they’ve made, an unfamiliar voice rings out down the hall, accompanied by footsteps drawing nearer. Ben’s heart rate picks up, and frantically, he looks around for any sort of escape, but he’s met with closed doors, and the walls begin to close in on him. They can’t be caught.

Kenji tries one of the doors, while Ben tries another on the other side of the hallway. He jiggles the handle. Locked. Time is running out.

“Over here!” says Kenji, and Ben turns to see him standing by an open door. “Come on!”

Ben wastes no time scrambling into the room, and Kenji pushes the door shut behind him, leaning against it. He allows himself to breathe out a sigh of relief before taking in the room before him.

It’s some sort of laboratory, or something. Ben’s not really sure. There aren’t any scientific tools like he’d expect, no test tubes or Petri dishes, just a circular metal pedestal in the middle of the room with a bunch of buttons on it, and empty steel tables that remind him of something he’d see at a morgue.

Puzzled by the purpose of this room, Ben looks around, but his heart nearly stops in his chest when the footsteps stop outside the door, and slowly, methodically, the doorknob begins to turn.

Kenji presses himself against the wall behind the door as it opens, and Ben, cursing his slow reaction time, dives behind the pedestal.

He can’t see what’s happening, but he hears a man’s voice say, “How many times have I told Paul not to leave that door unlocked? I swear…” He trails off, and Ben sneaks a glance around the pedestal to see a man in a lab coat holding a tablet.

Out of nowhere, a small, round object shoots out from behind the door, hitting the man in the head, and he crumples to the ground, the tablet clattering out of his hands.

“Boo-ya!” Kenji says, emerging from behind the door. He tosses a metallic blue yo-yo between his hands, a grin of pride plastered on his face.

Ben stands, looking back and forth between Kenji and the man lying unconscious on the floor. “Did you just hit him with a yo-yo?”

“Uh, yeah, and it was awesome,” says Kenji. He steps over the man and picks up the fallen tablet, beginning to tap through it.

“Where did you even get that thing?”

Kenji shrugs. “I grabbed it from the gift shop. Figured it might come in handy.”

It amazes Ben how everything at Jurassic World is designed with a complete disregard for human safety, but the fact that Kenji would use a yo-yo as his weapon of choice, rather than a knife or… literally anything else is such a Kenji thing to do that Ben has to laugh. And it feels good to laugh wholeheartedly, because being around Kenji just makes him happy.

Kenji briefly looks up to give Ben a smile, then immediately turns his attention back to the tablet.

“What’re you doing?” Ben asks.

“Trying to see if there’s something that can help us on here. But there’s just a bunch of boring emails and science files.” Kenji leans his hand against the pedestal, but he accidentally presses one of the buttons on it, and a blue holographic display flickers to life above the surface.

Both Ben and Kenji gawk at the hologram. It’s a dinosaur, but Ben doesn’t know what species it is. It’s not up to scale, but it appears to be a large flying creature of sorts, with a huge head and horns and outstretched wings.

“I seriously have no clue what I’m looking at,” Kenji says. Ben nods his agreement.

Kenji presses a few more buttons on the table out of curiosity, and the display changes. It’s another dinosaur, this one just as confusing to look at as the last. As Kenji flicks through the varying holograms, that seems to be a common theme. Strange, unfamiliar dinosaurs. Ben thinks he’d at least recognize _one_ species, but he’s completely clueless.

The only thing that they all have in common is that they look… violent, and terrifying, like something straight out of Ben’s worst nightmare.

“What… _are_ these?” Ben asks. “They look like monsters.”

Kenji frowns, then glances back down at the tablet. “They’re hybrids.”

“What?”

“These emails, a few of them had _hybrid_ in the subject line, and at first, I thought they were talking about cars or something, but…” He pauses, tapping the screen, a look of concentration coming over his face. “They’re talking about ‘hybrid synthesis’ and… and this most recent one says something about how they now have the I. rex in their possession.”

“The I. rex?” Ben repeats. How does this keep getting more confusing? “They-They can’t mean the Indominus, right? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Kenji is silent, staring at the tablet intently, when he suddenly looks up. It’s like visibly seeing a lightbulb go off in his head, and Ben has a feeling he isn’t going to like whatever Kenji’s about to say. “No,” he says slowly, setting the tablet down. “It makes perfect sense.”

“It does?”

“Dude, think about it! That symbol on their shirts, you remember that? The manticore?” Ben nods. It’s kind of hard to forget. Kenji continues, hand gestures growing more animated as he speaks, “A manticore is, like, a hybrid with a bunch of different animals! Man, I am a genius! Score one for Kenji!”

Ben raises an eyebrow as Kenji pumps his fist in the air victoriously, but he’s unable to keep the smile off his face.

Kenji, noticing Ben looking at him, says, “What? I had a mythology phase when I was ten.”

“Oh my g-d,” Ben says. “You’re a nerd.”

“What? No, I’m not!” Kenji crosses his arms defensively. “If anything, you’re a nerd. You have your juice boxes and your dork pouch, and—”

Ben gestures at the fanny pack around Kenji’s waist.

Kenji looks down, realization dawning in his eyes. “Oh, right, I, uh, totally forgot I had this,” he says, going to unbuckle it. “I better give it back to you.”

“No, keep it,” Ben says. “It suits you better. Nerd.”

Kenji’s face flushes, but he keeps the fanny pack on. “I’m going to regret telling you that, aren’t I?”

“Yep.” Ben’s gaze flickers to the tablet lying abandoned on the pedestal, and a realization of his own comes to fruition. “Wait, if… if there have been emails sent from that tablet, then I could email my mom and let her know what’s going on! And-And tell her I’m safe!” The _for now_ goes unspoken.

Kenji holds out the tablet to him. “Go for it.”

Ben spends a few minutes writing up an email, giving her a brief rundown of what had happened in the short amount of time they’d been on the island, from the Indominus escape to getting on the helicopter. He omits the whole falling out of a monorail thing, because he knows his poor mom will worry herself to death if he _does_ tell her, and ends the email by telling her that he’s safe and that he’ll be home soon. He just hopes that’s true.

More than anything, he can’t wait to see his mom again. The first thing he’s gonna do when— _if_ —he gets home is give her the world’s biggest hug and tell her how much he loves her, because if there’s one thing he’s learned from this experience, it’s that things change fast, and he should tell the people he loves that he cares about them while he still has the chance.

Ben looks up at Kenji, who’s been quiet the whole time, then sends the email, ensuring it’s gone through. “Do you, uh, wanna send something to your family, or…”

“I’m fine,” Kenji says before he can finish his thought, then makes a move for the door. “We should get going. I don’t know how much longer this dude is gonna stay passed out.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Ben murmurs, looking down at the unconscious Mantah Corp scientist, then back at the tablet screen. “There’s a map on here. The herbivores are in the north wing of the building, and we’re in the west wing. That must be where Bumpy is.”

“Then we’re going north,” Kenji says, already halfway out the door.

They end up bickering for five minutes about which way is north, until they figure out that the little red dot on the map can just show them where they’re going. From then on, they’re silent. They can’t risk anyone hearing them, but that doesn’t stop the near misses. Several times, they have to duck out of the sight of Mantah Corp employees who walk down the hallways.

When they reach the enormous double doors that lead to the herbivore wing, Ben attempts to pull them open, but a scanner next to the door flashes red and beeps. Shit. It must be restricted.

But then Kenji comes to his rescue, holding up a key card. “Got it from that guy,” he explains, and Ben smiles, because what would he do without Kenji?

The door automatically opens, and immediately Ben’s eyes are met with a large, spacious room, like a warehouse, the ceiling rises at least fifty feet, and in cages throughout the room are various herbivores: triceratops, parasaurolophus, and of course, ankylosauruses, but upon first glance, Bumpy isn’t among them.

It’s just… a sad sight. These dinosaurs aren’t meant to live indoors, in cages, but clearly, Mantah Corp doesn’t care much about their well-being.

“Alright,” says Kenji. “Operation: Find Bumpy is a go.”

Footsteps clatter behind them and both boys jump, turning to see the source of the sound, as two employees run by the doors but pay no attention to the fact that they’re open.

Kenji goes to push the doors shut, then looks to Ben. “This is getting too close for comfort,” he says. “We need to do something, like… cause a diversion, or something.”

“Like what?” Ben asks.

“Well, splitting up isn’t an option, but…” Kenji scans the facility, until finally his eyes land on something behind Ben. He turns to follow his gaze and finds him staring directly at a stegosaurus in its cage. “We _are_ in a room full of dinosaurs.”

“Oh, no,” Ben says, shaking his head frantically as he realizes what Kenji’s idea is. “No, no, no, no, we’re not doing that! Someone could get hurt. Probably us!”

“C’mon, Ben, they’re _herbivores,_ which means they eat herbs. Not humans. What’s the worst that could happen if we let one or two out?”

Ben grimaces, his sense of self-preservation screaming at him. He knows just how dangerous herbivores can be—the sinoceratops experience was enough to engrain that fact in his mind, but Kenji’s right. Their luck is running out, and it’s only a matter of time before something bad happens.

“Fine,” says Ben as Kenji begins to walk down the aisle of cages. “We’ll do it. But first, we’re finding Bumpy.”

“Already got that covered, bro.” Kenji grins and kneels down in front of one of the cages. Ben comes to his side to see Bumpy curled up inside, but she perks up when she notices Ben and Kenji.

Kenji uses the key card to open the cage, and immediately, Bumpy launches herself into Kenji’s arms, and he barely manages to catch her. “Woah there, girl, you’re getting heavy,” he says with a breathless laugh.

And Ben just stands there and watches with a stupid smile on his face as Kenji scratches behind her horn. They’ve definitely come a long way from when Kenji wanted to leave her behind, and he has to admit, their newly-forged friendship is adorable.

“Ben?” Kenji says, and Ben blinks, returning to reality. “You good? You kinda spaced out there.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Ben’s cheeks go warm as he realizes he’d just been staring unabashedly at Kenji.

Bumpy squeals delightedly and butts her head against Ben’s leg. “I missed you, too, Bumpy,” he says, smiling.

“Operation: Find Bumpy was a success,” Kenji says, getting to his feet. “Now onto Operation: Kenji And Ben Free The Dinos But Only Some Of Them Because Darius Told Me Herbivores Can Be Very Aggressive.”

“Is that the whole name?”

“Yeah.” Kenji pauses. “You open up the doors. I’ll let them out.”

Before Ben has time to process that, Kenji is already gone, but he runs to the doors regardless, Bumpy following behind. However, a panel of buttons on the wall catches his eye, and he figures now is the time to take a page out of Kenji’s book and make an impulse decision. Pressing random buttons usually causes large amounts of mayhem, which is precisely what they need right now.

One of the buttons causes a huge door on the other end of the facility to slowly slide open, like a garage door, and the fading daylight filters in. The dinosaurs that Kenji’s already let out—a couple of parasaurolophuses—curiously wander out into the jungle.

Kenji returns to his side moments later, nodding his approval. “Nice,” he says. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

They decide to go around the side of the building instead of back through the halls. They don’t have time to waste, and they run and don’t look back. Now, somehow, they have to get off this island, and the answer becomes glaringly apparent when Kenji skids to a stop at the landing pad. The helicopter.

Ben begins imagining up a million outcomes of this situation, that Kenji will have to bribe the pilot to fly them home, or that they’ll be caught, and the possibility of the helicopter being empty doesn’t even cross his mind, but there it sits, abandoned on the landing pad, and Ben doesn’t know if that’s better or worse.

Kenji climbs into the helicopter, then helps Bumpy on board, but Ben stands on the pad, faltering.

He glances back at the facility. It feels like they’ve uncovered something much bigger than themselves here, Mantah Corp, the hybrids, the Indominus Rex… all pieces of one complex, conspiratorial puzzle. Plus, those dinosaurs that are being kept here… Someone has to do something about that.

But not them. Not now. As of this moment, their friends are still trapped on Isla Nublar.

“Ben, you coming?”

Ben turns back to Kenji, who’s leaning out of the helicopter, holding out his hand, the sun setting behind him.

And Ben doesn’t even have to think about it. Their friends come first, always.

He takes his hand.

-

Yaz wakes unexpectedly. The sky is still pitch-black, and the jungle is quiet; no sound but owls hooting and far-off roars. Nothing out of the ordinary on Isla Nublar. The others are all lying on the shore, fast asleep, and she figures now is a better time than any to get some late-night sketching in.

She leans up against a nearby tree, pulling open the drawstring bag she’d taken from the gift store, and takes out the dinosaur-themed notebook and pen. Seriously, this dino merchandise is awful, but she couldn’t resist inconspicuously slipping it into her bag, and it’s a better medium than drawing on tree bark, or something.

Yaz sits there for a long time, absentmindedly doodling, but all she seems to be able to draw is Sammy. Portraits of her face, her smile, _her, _because everything always comes back to her.__

____

____

“Can’t sleep?”

Yaz flinches and looks up to see Sammy standing above her. Hurriedly, she shuts her notebook.

“Uh, no,” she says. “Not really.”

“Well, I was just gonna go for a canoe ride, if you wanna join me…” Sammy says.

She considers saying no. Not because she doesn’t want to, no, that’s not why; she wants to spend time with Sammy more than anything. But she’s terrified of what might happen now that they have a minute to relax, now that she can hear her own thoughts clearly.

“Sure.”

Yaz stands, albeit shakily, and the two of them climb into the canoe in silence, Sammy in front and Yaz in back. As they begin to row, slowly propelling down the river, Yaz can’t help but admire Sammy.

The way her smile is illuminated by the bioluminescent glow of the water, the way she occasionally pauses rowing to lean over the side of the boat and gaze at the water, dipping her hand in.

Eventually, Yaz stops her own rowing, letting the current carry them down the river. This moment is serene, and magical, and perfect, and the most beautiful part of it isn’t even the glowing water or the stars in the night sky, because both of those are dull compared to Sammy. And Yaz thinks, _This is right. This is how it should’ve been all along._ If she hadn’t been so afraid of her own feelings…

Suddenly, the boat rocks, and the water ripples. Sammy’s eyes widen. “Yaz, look!”

She leans over the side of the canoe to gaze at the water, and it’s hard to make out at first, but then she sees them. Dolphins, several of them, swimming alongside their canoe, but they’re not the dolphins she’d expect to see. They’re much larger, spanning at least ten feet, and most peculiar of all, they have bioluminescent underbellies that give off a bright green glow, much like the algae.

“Are those… dinosaurs?” Yaz asks.

Sammy doesn’t answer, still in awe of the dolphins. “I wish I could live in this moment forever,” she muses. “Or, at least, that I had a camera to capture it.”

“Yeah, well…”

Sammy looks up, fixing her gaze on Yaz. “I’m sorry.”

Yaz takes in a deep breath. Maybe she should’ve known something like this was coming, that she would be forced to face her feelings. _No more running,_ she thinks. _Not from the dinosaurs, or your feelings, or anything._

“Honestly, I’m not mad anymore,” she says. “I might not completely understand why you did what you did, but… we can’t change the past. We’ve all done things we regret, and for all I know, we could die tomorrow. And I don’t want to die mad at you, and… I don’t want you to die not knowing how I felt.”

Sammy is silent for a long time, but she doesn’t look away, and Yaz can’t look anywhere but Sammy’s face, either. “So… how _do_ you feel?”

Yaz’s heart pounds faster in her chest. “You’re important to me, Sammy. Really important.” She pauses, glancing down at the bracelet around her wrist. “And I’m not used to putting my feelings out in the open like this, or feeling this way at all, but…” _Get to the point. No more running._ “I really, really like you, and I think that’s why it hurt so much when everything happened, but I just want to forget about that and start over because I… oh, g-d, I’m rambling. I’m sorry.”

She watches Sammy’s expression shift from shocked, to soon softening into a smile. “I like you, too, Yaz,” she says.

Yaz swears her heart skips a beat. Did she hear that correctly?

“Y-You do?”

“Of course I do. I thought I was being obvious.”

“I had no idea,” Yaz says. G-d, she’s so oblivious. She wouldn’t have seen that coming if Sammy didn’t straight out say it. But… Sammy likes her, too, and it’s like fireworks are exploding around them, yet Sammy is the only thing that comes into focus.

Hesitantly, she reaches out and grabs Sammy’s hand, who interlaces their fingers together, and Yaz can’t help but laugh sadly.

“If this were any other situation, this would be normal,” she says. “We would be holding hands in a coffee shop, or-or a museum, or…”

“Yaz, I promise you, when we get out of here, that’s the first thing we’re going to do,” says Sammy. “I’ll take you on a proper date—oh, after I introduce you to my family, of course! They’ll love you; I just know it.”

And Yaz can’t stop thinking about how she’d said _when_ instead of _if,_ because it seems so close now. They’re getting off this island, one way or another.

She savors this moment as long as she can, just her and Sammy together, the feeling of their hands intertwined, the glow of the water, and the quiet. She doesn’t even mind it anymore. The quiet is beautiful now, because she gets to enjoy it with Sammy.

Yaz doesn’t know how much time they spend like that, sitting in the canoe, just enjoying each other’s company. Somehow, things have shifted. It’s like a weight has lifted off her shoulders, and everything can only turn out right from this point on.

Maybe that’s just wishful thinking, because the peace is soon shattered by a resounding crash, sounding way too close for comfort, and a line of smoke rises above the trees.

This can’t be good.


End file.
